Embodiments of the present invention relate to network asset management and to method and apparatus for automatically surveying a network.
The development of so-called intranets, e.g., private networks operated typically using the TCP/IP protocol suite creates problems of management and administration. System administrators need to know what equipment is connected to the network and its configuration. The information is necessary for user support, network planning, corporate financial statements, software purchasing etc.
However, many intranets include thousands of nodes. Thus, surveying the network manually is a lengthy process. First, the physical location of each node must be known. Often, even this information is difficult to obtain and maintain since extensions to a network may be made without notifying the system administrator. Then, the system administrator (or a surrogate) must visit each and every node. For each node, he or she records the equipment there. To learn which operating system is installed, the MAC address, the amount of RAM, the node name, the host ID, and other configuration information, he or she must operate the system.
The survey process is thus quite cumbersome and may take several weeks, by which time the information collected early in the process may well be partially obsolete. Furthermore, the survey process requires skilled labor, otherwise available for other network administration tasks.
A network management protocol known as SNMP exists for providing external access to network management information resident at a network node. However, its primary application has been monitoring network performance rather than asset surveying.